Seat-Kicking Incident Leads to Stabbing at Los Angeles Movie Theater

A few years ago, I wrote up a brief item about an incident taking place at Los Angeles’ AFI Film Festival wherein an irate woman maced a man in the face for having the gall to ask her to turn off her cell phone during a screening of Mike Leigh’s J.M.W. Turner biopic Mr. Turner. “Wow, being at the movies sure makes people do crazy things!” I thought to myself. “I wonder how long it’ll be until the next time I get to write about a violent movie theater conflict over petty nonsense.” That day has come at last, and this time [beat to let the moment breathe] the stakes are even higher.

Deadline reported on the odd story just this morning: over the weekend, a SoCal couple headed to the AMC 7 Theater in the town of La Mirada. The 29-year-old man and his 24-year-old companion had allegedly spent most of the film kicking the seats in front of them, and the people occupying those seats soon engaged them in an argument. Things escalated as they so often do, and the woman responded by taking a knife out of her purse and using it to slash one of her challengers on the arm. The LAPD apprehended the couple and brought them to the local station, where the man remains held on bail while his companion was able to walk out on Sunday afternoon. The victim sustained only minor injuries, which were easily treated in-house at the theater.

But hey, who among us hasn’t felt the urge to stab someone at a theater? The one frustrating bit about this story is that Deadline’s reportage doesn’t specify which movie the stab-happy couple was kicking their way through before the incident. I like to believe that The Boss Baby is the film responsible for driving the couple into a violent rage.